Lonely Boy
by PENNandBLAKE
Summary: What will Lonely Boy see to make him speechless? Series of Fliclets!
1. Chapter 1

_**Lonely Boy**_

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**What will Lonely Boy see to make him speechless?**

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PEASE REVIEW AND TELL ME IF I SHOULD CONTINUE I HAVE GOOD IDEAS FOR THIS STORY BUT I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR IDEAS FOR THIS STORY!

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"Hey Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here... and I have the biggest news ever. One of my many sources, Melanie91, sends us this: Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand: Serena van der Woodsen. Was it only a year ago our It-Girl mysteriously disappeared for quote 'boarding school'? And just as suddenly she's back. Don't believe me? See for yourselves: Lucky for us, Melanie91 sent proof. Thanks for the photo, Mel! Spotted: Lonely Boy... can't believe the love of his life has returned. If only she knew who he was. But everyone knows Serena. And everyone is talking. Wonder what Blair Waldorf thinks. Sure, they're BFFs but what will Serena do when she meets the new king and queen? I don't know about you, but I can't wait to find out."

Blair stopped tugging her dress back on when she saw the message Gossip Girl had posted. She blinked for a moment as she tried to register what she'd just read. A lot had changed in a year. So much that she couldn't quite picture Serena in this world any more.

She froze when she felt Chuck's arms slip around her waist, and his lips pressed against her neck.

"I'm sure you don't want your mother to come looking for us again." He whispered out against her ear. "We should probably go back out to the party."

Slowly she turned around in his arms. "Serena's back."

He grinned. "Well, things were getting boring around here… We could use some excitement."

SPOTTED: S LEAVING B's PARTY IN UNDER 90 SECONDS

YOU KNOW YOU LOVE ME

XOXO GOSSIP GIRL

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PEASE REVIEW AND TELL ME IF I SHOULD CONTINUE I HAVE GOOD IDEAS FOR THIS STORY BUT I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR IDEAS FOR THIS STORY!


	2. Chapter 2

_**Lonely Boy**_

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Dan came to her rescue like the white knight he wasn't and he seemed like exactly what her new self needed. He was a little bit shy and awkward and rambling and clearly infatuated with her. He was a good student, which she could learn from. A protective older brother, which she could relate to. He was someone who generally followed the rules, and that was precisely what she was trying to do. Dan exuded…goodness. And it made her want to be good, too.

It was awkward at first; she hadn't taken the time to consider that they'd grown up in vastly different circumstances and came from different worlds. Despite the fact that she was trying to tame down her bad habits, she'd seen a sort of freedom in dating Dan, who knew so little of her past, and who lived in a loft in Brooklyn rather than in a penthouse on Park Avenue. She didn't realize, until Blair was at Dan's side wearing a pretty smile and preparing to spit out poisonous words, that there was a danger in dating someone who thought she was something other than she really was. She could feel Nate's presence at her side, guilty and pleading, and then Chuck had burst out with the truth, and she knew it was, in part, his way of attacking her for changing.

"Look, Serena, stop trying to pretend you're a good girl. So you slept with your best friend's boyfriend…I kind of admire you for it."

She could hardly look at him, or Blair or Nate or Chuck for that matter, but she had to, and all she saw in his eyes was judgment and disappointment. He'd built her up in his head, formed this ideal version of her, and she didn't live up to it. They argued, and he left, and maybe that should've been it, but it wasn't.

After she embarrassed herself to protect Eric, he saw another side of her, and they eased into giving one another a second chance. Even though she could tell that he was often in a little over his head around her, he was so wonderful to her that she decided that that didn't matter. He was sweet, and she wouldn't deny that she was attracted to him. They slowly figured one another out and learned how to slip into each other's lives. His family was fairly easy to deal with, her whole world offered a few more complications.

Nonetheless, she fell for him. She wanted him. And when another girl waltzed back into his life with pretty eyes and an adoring smile directed only at Dan, she was unhappy. With Dan, she liked to disregard all history on both sides, and Vanessa's appearance hit her like a slap in the face. There were a lot of boys in Serena's history, but only a couple important ones. She didn't know there were any girls at all in Dan's past, never mind one so beautiful and obviously into him. But Dan looked at her with earnest brown eyes and promised she was the only one he cared about, and she always believed him.

She'd never been patient with anything or anyone, and she'd long ago left behind her reservations, so when she knew she wanted to have sex with Dan Humphrey, she was going to have sex with Dan Humphrey. But it was a bigger deal for him, which she couldn't help but find strangely endearing. She knew that it was his first time and she didn't really care, but what she found so sweet was that he wanted to make it special, something no one had ever even considered doing for her before. She saw it in his eyes as they laid there in his bed in his candle-filled room, and it took her breath away and frightened her in the weirdest way.

"It's just…nobody's ever looked at me the way you just did," she struggled to explain to him. "In fact, I don't think they looked at me at all."

And somehow in that moment they weren't such different people and they were in one world that belonged simply to them, and he understood her completely, puling her close and wrapping her up and holding her all night long, filling up her heart.

There were days that felt unbelievably perfect and safe with him, eating a picnic in the park together, kissing in between classes at school, curling up next to him and pretending to do homework in the evenings. But their relationship couldn't catch a break, and it wasn't long before a new complication presented itself.

The fact that her mother had once been in love with Dan's dad both baffled and disconcerted Serena. Rufus was nice, but Lily's social circle had always, to Serena's knowledge, been quite different. It also made her feel strangely close to her mother in a way she didn't desire at all. She'd sworn long ago that she didn't want her love life to be anything like Lily's.

Maybe that was the catalyst to her first big fight with Dan, or maybe it was simply the judgmental way he talked about her grandmother, who she loved dearly, and the way her throat tightened when she heard him speak. Maybe it had all been a mistake. Maybe he really couldn't handle her life, as much as she wanted him to.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Lonely Boy**_

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Serena felt a rush of something so monumental as Dan dipped her back and kissed her on the dance floor before he swept her up into his arms and carried her away. It was the kind of thing she'd been trying to avoid feeling for a boy most of her life, and maybe it was unacceptable for every version of her that had existed before that moment, but she began to think that it was okay with Dan.

And on Christmas, when he revealed that he'd written a story about her and he bought her a Christmas tree and snuck it into her building, she felt herself falling very, very hard. When they slept together that night in the winter wonderland she'd created, it felt like she had as much of him as he had of her.

Things shifted that day she revealed to him that she was the one who broke into the school, easily done considering the key the lacrosse captain had given her way back when, and she saw judgment rise up in his eyes once again. She almost expected their relationship to unravel right then and there because she'd never been given a reason to believe that anything else would happen, but instead his eyes softened a bit and he stepped up and stood by her, and she found herself confessing because she cared about him enough to protect his future. A short time later, when he thought their futures were facing a huge change, he told her he loved her and she excused it as his trying to reassure her in case she was pregnant, so she kissed his cheek and resolved to forget those words because she had no idea what to do with him.

He was so good to her through everything with Blair, but he didn't realize that she was too concerned about her best friend's hellish love triangle to deal with the I love you he laid on her only days after the first time he'd said it. Her mind and her heart were already full of Blair's problems, no one had ever pledged love for her before, and she was scared of those three words.

"Okay," was all she could say, and as her heart broke a little watching him walk away, she realized that she loved him back.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Lonely Boy**_

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Serena went to Dan and asked him for reasons he was all too happy to give: "Because I actually like it when you interrupt me – which is often, by the way. I love you because you make no apologies about being exactly who you are. Beautiful, smart…sexy as hell…You're completely unaware of your effect on me. You're also completely unaware that you laugh like a four-year-old. And I love you because you can be with someone like me, and still be best friends with someone like Blair."

And when she said those three words back to him, it didn't feel so much like losing.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Lonely Boy_**

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In a way, Serena felt a part of her expected that she'd ruin her relationship with Dan, because things never stay that pure and perfect for long. She was herself and he was himself and their personalities didn't click even if their emotions did. She didn't start dating Dan with the idea that their relationship had an expiration date; she went so far as to plead with her mother and promise that she and Dan were forever so that Lily and Rufus didn't get together.

She supposed she should have realized that the epic tale of Dan and Serena had an expiration date, but she never could have guessed that he'd be the one to pick it. Maybe that was unfair, that she assumed she'd be the one to break his poetry-writing, black-coffee-drinking heart, but she couldn't make excuses for the way she'd always been – at least since she was six years old – and some things just never change.

Except maybe Dan Humphrey, who practically cheated on her with her nemesis, the girl who was trying to ruin her life. She stumbled into his apartment after a sleepless night, her eyes aching at the wonderful sight of him, and then Georgina was there. She stumbled through an explanation and Dan seemed to take her word for it, but he was uncertain when she asked if they were okay. It left her breathless to think that they might not be, because she had given him the very biggest part of herself – given, not let him take. She'd volunteered those three precious words and herself and her life, rested so much of herself in his hands.

He didn't want her, didn't want them. She could tell that it pained him, but all she could feel was hurt and grief. They were back where they'd begun. He was handing everything back to her, shoving it at her, anxious to be rid of it. There was judgment in his eyes even when he claimed understanding. They were too different. He didn't want to be the one who held that piece of her because it was too difficult for him.

So he gave it back without knowing that she'd always have left something behind.


	6. Chapter 6

**_Lonely Boy_**

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Sometimes, Serena came to find out, you could love someone and they could love you back and there could still be something missing. You could want them and they could want you, but things might just not work. In the beginning, with Dan, opposites attracted and that worked out fine. But they were too different from one another, so much so that they repelled each other instead. She was always going to be Serena van der Woodsen, she was always going to be a little wild, and he was always going to try to do everything the right way, and he wouldn't always be able to forgive her when she didn't.

She gained, somehow, from their breakup. She chose to cover up the broken, missing bits of her with strength, and it was at that point (with a little unwelcome help from her stepbrother) that she remembered who she was. She was Serena van der Woodsen. Dan had certainly reminded her of that; now it was time to show him exactly who that was. He hurt her, and she had more power than he really knew to hurt him back.

It wasn't easy to fall out of love, but it was remarkably easy to fall back in the spotlight, to take her place as queen. It was one of the few things in her life that had ever been so natural, and she thought that maybe there was some truth in that stupid Queen Elizabeth story Blair was always telling. Enough people adored her from afar. Finding her king was breaking her apart. She didn't want to try anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**_Lonely Boy_**

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So when Serena got home she rushed into the last place she'd left herself, which was, as far as she knew, Dan Humphrey's arms.

They both really wanted it to be easy. He still adored her, and she still adored him for adoring her…and it just should have been easy.

But it wasn't. Their third attempt at being with one another only proved the reasons behind their prior breakups. They still had all the same issues, and they only gained more significant ones as they tried to ignore the smaller things. Their parents fell in love – and she guessed that they could have made it work if they really wanted and needed each other badly enough, weird as it may have been, but neither of them put quite enough effort in, and that had to mean something. And then Dan did the strangest, most out-of-character thing by having sex with her teacher, of all people, and she knew that was the very end of things. They'd been entirely messed up. If there was any sort of relationship left to salvage, it wasn't a romantic one.

She knew she'd been hanging on to him. It was just hard to let go of so much and not have anything to show for it.


	8. Chapter 8

**_Lonely Boy_**

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Dan bailed Serena out and brought her a dress and took her to the prom, which was sweet. He rambled his way through assuring her that she wasn't irrelevant with the most earnest look on his face. And she smiled at him thought that maybe they could be friends, knowing they'd have to be stepsiblings, and beginning to believe that she was okay with him having some part of her, because at least he'd keep it safe.


	9. Chapter 9

_Hella Good—No Doubt_

Dan would never be able to explain to anyone how Serena made him feel. She had the ability to both break his heart and put it back together, and sometimes, that scared the hell out of him. He'd been in love with her, he realized, ever since that party when she'd spoken to him. At the time, he knew that the graceful blonde was just being friendly, but he'd never been able to get the sound of her voice, melodic and angelic, out of his head.

He'd never dreamed that, two years later, they would end up where they were now: on his bed, with Serena snuggled into his chest as he softly stroked his hair. He was quickly becoming addicted to the way she was making him feel, and he didn't want it to end. Dan Humphrey was completely, unabashedly, unequivocally in love with Serena Van Der Woodsen. And the kicker? Dan felt that she just might be in love with him, too.

_Next Contestant—Nickelback_

Dan was seething as he stood just outside of the school, his hands firmly shoved in his pockets. He was inconspicuously watching Serena as she talked with Nate, the two of them giggling as Nate leaned in to whisper in Serena's ear. Dan felt his hand ball into a fist and he bit his lip to keep from growling. He'd never really had a problem with Nate—they barely spoke to one another—but right now, Dan was willing every bone in his body to stay still and not cause a scene. Nate knew damn well how Dan felt about Serena, and yet, he was flirting with the blonde, as though he didn't have a care in the world. The blonde boy paused for a second and looked up, his bright eyes catching Dan's. Dan remained still, unflinching, as he stared back. The corner of Nate's mouth lifted up in a smirk, which made Dan's blood boil even more. The only thing stopping him from knocking the rich prick on his ass right now was Serena.  
Dan took a deep breath and walked away as quickly as he could.

_Far Away—Nickelback_

Sitting on Serena's couch, in the middle of her apartment, was like coming home for Dan. They'd spent the past five years playing mindless, hurtful games with each other; games in which there was no winner, and now, it felt as though they'd come full circle. Dan wanted nothing more than a fresh start with the woman that had once been the girl of his dreams, and after the day they'd spent together, he knew that she wanted the same thing. But still, there was an unspoken question hanging in the air. Dan chose to ignore it and cherish the precious little time that they had left together, instead. A small smile played at his lips as he leaned in and gently brushed his lips over Serena's.

"That's what I want."


	10. Chapter 10

_Sorry—Buckcherry_

He'd spent a good portion of the summer thinking about the decision he had made to break up with Serena. After their encounter on the jitney, Dan was left more confused than ever. He wondered if maybe he hadn't been a bit hasty in his decision. It was obvious from the bus trip that the chemistry he and Serena had always had was still there. They'd loved nearly as often as they'd fought, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that, when it came down to talking about their feelings and vocalizing their concerns about their relationship or about each other, they simply couldn't do it. And Dan wasn't sure if Serena had missed him or not, though, the more he thought about it, the more he was inclined to believe that she hadn't thought about him at all. She was Serena Van Der Woodsen, after all; it's not like she had any experience in the heartbreak department.

But Dan had missed his blonde goddess terribly, so much so that he was going to swallow his pride and call her to apologize. Not just for the break up, either, for everything. Dan felt that he'd acted like a jerk, and he wasn't exactly counting on Serena to pick up the phone on the first ring, but he hoped that she'd at least hear him out. The summer had brought not only clarity for him; he'd also realized the depths of his feelings for Serena. Dan knew that they could be better than ever if Serena just gave him the chance.

_Iris—Goo Goo Dolls_

Dan Humphrey was in love with Serena Van Der Woodsen, and he didn't care who knew it. She was the complete opposite of everything he'd ever thought he wanted, and yet he was drawn to her for that reason. But Serena seemed to have reservations about their budding romance. It was almost as though she was afraid that jumping in with both feet would change the person she was in her family and friends eyes. Dan didn't care; he'd give up anything just to be with Serena. He just wished that there was something he could do to make it a little easier for her.

_Hands Down—Dashboard Confessional_

He felt like he was living in a dream. Dan had gone to painstaking lengths to make sure that their first time together was perfect—he'd changed the sheets and hidden Cedric, at the suggestions of both his little sister and his dad—and now that Serena was standing in front of him, all coy and flushed, biting her lip and smiling at him as she pulled him into a kiss, Dan felt like he could die right there. He kissed Serena back with equal passion and lust, never wanting the moment to end.

_Sugar, We're Going Down—Fall Out Boy_

As he stood in the sidelines, watching Serena passionately embrace and then kiss Nate, Dan wondered if he'd ever meant anything to her. Had he been just another pawn in Serena Van Der Woodsen's quest to date every guy in the entire Upper East Side, or had she really meant it when she'd told him she loved him? Right now, Dan felt like the biggest fool in the world. Anyone with adequate vision could see by the way Serena was pressed tightly to Nate, almost clinging to him, as they kissed, that he was the one she had always loved.

And the messed up part of this entire scenario was that he was still standing there, watching, picturing himself in Nate's position. Dan sucked in a shaky breath and ran a hand through his curly locks as he continued to watch. He wondered if Serena even remembered that she was supposed to meet him to talk. He wondered if she even cared.


	11. Chapter 11

_It Is What It Is—Lifehouse_

There was no salvaging this, no matter how hard they tried. Maybe that was the problem—they were trying to repair something that was broken beyond repair, when what they both needed to do was move on with their lives, without each other. It pained Dan to even think about it, much less say it, but he felt that too much had happened. They'd both lied

"No matter who we are today, we can't undo the things we've done in the past." Dan's voice was soft, barely audible. "It's probably best if we just move on, without each other."

Serena didn't want that. She wanted a fresh start, just like when she had returned from boarding school. She wanted nothing more than to put behind all the hurtful, childish schemes that she and Dan had both executed to hurt each other, and move on. If she were honest, she wanted to move on with Dan, but if he didn't want that, there was nothing she could do. She had already lost Steven; she couldn't exactly expect Dan to come running back to her as a replacement. But then, she didn't want him to be. She wanted him to be the Dan Humphrey she had fallen in love with five years ago. And she wanted to be the Serena he had fallen in love with.

_Life After You—Daughtry_

He knew that he'd made a huge mistake. Watching Serena dance with Nate, her beautiful eyes twinkling and that adorable smile lighting up her face reminded Dan of how unbelievably stupid he'd been that night. What had he been thinking when he'd told Serena that he was done and that he never wanted to see her again? Clearly, he hadn't. He'd acted like a stupid child, jumping to conclusions before he knew the full story. Dan had just been so angry that he'd acted on impulse, and now, he was paying the price for it.

What Serena had done in her past didn't matter to him—why would it? It wasn't his place to judge her. Once again, he had shoved his foot firmly in his mouth, and Dan feared that there would be no fixing this. He didn't care about Serena's past or her family, or the way that Blair glared at him scornfully every time he passed her. The fact of the matter was that he was head over heels in love with Serena Van Der Woodsen—all of her, the good and the bad. The only thing that mattered to Dan was a life with this girl. Nothing else was important.

_Uptown Girl—Billy Joel_

Dan knew that he could never compete with the guys that Serena was used to, but maybe he didn't have to. He couldn't give her dinners at five-star restaurants or whisk her away to Paris on a whim like someone like Nate could, but he could love her with all that he had. He could show Serena that she was the most beautiful and special woman in the world. Dan was terrified of doing or saying the wrong thing and losing Serena. And he knew that if it was at all possible, he would. When it came to Serena Van Der Woodsen, luck was not on his side. She was completely out of his league, and Dan knew he was lucky that she'd even spoken to him at that party two years ago.

If he was being completely honest with himself, Dan knew that the chances of their relationship being a long-term one were slim to none. Because as CeCe Rhodes had so callously reminded him, Van Der Woodsens didn't end up with Humphreys. Dan fully expected their relationship to end as quickly as it had began, so that Serena could get married to and have babies with someone far more deserving of her, perhaps Nate, or any of the other guys at St. Jude's. He was a nobody, a lonely boy from Brooklyn. Dan didn't matter to anyone other than his immediate family, and he felt as though he would forever be nothing more than a tiny, insignificant blip on Serena's radar, no matter how hard he tried.


	12. Chapter 12

Serena doesn't know how she's gotten so far into this.

It's not the first time she does something like this. Not the first time she randomly meets a guy and jumps on his bike, or goes clubbing with him, or finds herself half-naked in the backseat of his car. She hasn't done this much since she moved to Seattle, but it's not the first time.

She doesn't trust people irrationally, Eric's totally wrong about that, but she does trust her instincts. And her instincts say that this boy—twenty-something, scruffy, smells like he's been wearing the same shirt for days, like he's just realized he's hit rock bottom and doesn't know how to come back up—they say that this boy deserves her company.

She met him this morning at a small, family-run coffeehouse, and he looked like a lost puppy, like he wouldn't be able to point at the ground.

They're walking up Washington Park towards Montlake, where they're meeting some friend of his, when two things happen.

One, she asks him what he does for a living.

He turns around, hands in his pockets, and his mouth curls into a self-deprecating smile—smirk, maybe—a silent way of snorting at himself. "I'm a," he begins, with a pause for extra undervaluation. "I'm a writer." And he adds, "Sort of," like the point wasn't clear.

Two, a duck starts swimming, and on the trail it leaves on the surface of the water, Serena notices that it's beginning to drizzle.

"How can you be _sort of_ a writer?" she asks. "Do you write?"

"Yeah. Not so much lately, though." He looks ahead, at nothing in particular. She doesn't think his eyes are taking anything in. "Sometimes I feel like I'm fifteen again, like I'm supposed to do everything over. Like I've taken the wrong path and I should go back and build my career again."

"You're not even thirty, there's time."

He chuckles. The way he does makes Serena think he's the kind of person who thinks he's seen everything, who thinks you can't trust anyone. Someone who's read too much and lived too little. It feels like, in this equation, she's not the one supposed to doubt. "It's a very random business."

"But you've been published, right? That opens doors."

"I guess."

"Anything I may have read?" asks Serena. "Don't underestimate me."

"Probably not," he says. "Self-published. Means I know where most of my books are."

"Which is..."

He breathes in, and a drop of rain falls on the bridge of his nose. He wrinkles it, and it moves down to his upper lip. "Brooklyn, New York."

Serena reaches out and clutches his elbow, catches the raindrop on his nose with her index finger, dries it off on her jeans. The drizzle progresses. "I may have seen it," she says, and he's looking at her. Looking like he's amazed, and yeah, Serena gets this, _a lot_, but this boy seems different somehow—like he's actually seeing _her_.

She's still holding his arm.

He snaps out of it and picks up his pace. Her hand slides down to his forearm. "We should walk faster if we want to reach Vanessa's apartment before we get soaked."

"Hey," Serena says, and squeezes his arm. "Hey." She smiles, looks up. "Who says _we_ want that?" She squints, silly reaction to a raindrop reaching her eyelash. She picks it up. "See? It's harmless."

He smiles, a little bit like she's insane, a little bit like he's amused.

"You need to do a dreadcheck," she says.


	13. Chapter 13

He frowns, but the smile stays. "A dreadcheck," he repeats.

"Yeah," she says, pursing her lips like she's deep in thought, though she really isn't. She's only thinking this seems like a good day. She's feeling everything else: how she left her jacket in his car when she convinced him to stroll the rest of the way, how the sky seems to start humming when it's about to rain, how the world is grey but it's not a metaphor, the rain, not a metaphor for sadness, but something that feels like life's about to begin. She looks at him. "Can you hear that? Don't tell me you can't hear that."

"Hear what?"

Another duck runs for its life. You'd think it's never rained in Seattle, the way those birds stampede. "The world is saying," and she's trying to keep serious, she is, but she can't help the smile, and it's worth it when he looks at it, "it's saying, Dan Humphrey, why are you so sad and blue?"

"I'm not—"

"It's saying," she says, and she holds his hands, pulls his arms open, looks up so he'll mirror her gaze. "It's saying, hey, Lonely Boy, why don't you color your own infinity?"

He laughs, and she almost bounces, it's such a victory. "I don't think that's what it's saying, but okay."

"What _is_ it saying?"

He frowns at her. His hair is wet, has begun to absorb the water. She feels a trickle down her temples, too, down her shoulders, into her armpits. Her nose feels cold, and she sniffs.

The rain may not be saying anything, but it sure is making noise.

"I think," he starts, "I think it's saying we're stupid for standing here, and we should run or we're gonna catch a cold."

She hits him lightly on the arm. "Is it? I don't think it is." There's thunder, and it starts raining even heavier. She has to raise her voice. "Why would it say that? Why would an abyss tell you not to jump? That's ridiculous."

"And your theory's perfectly sound?" he shouts back.

"Absolutely," she declares, loud. "You're all hunched up like you don't want to let _nature_ slide into you. I'm nature's vessel."

He points out, "That's _terrifying_."

And she laughs, exhilaration washing through her: the fact that she's here instead of somewhere else, the fact that this boy's mouth is open like he's breathing the storm in, and the park is mostly empty, only some people running under ridiculously flowery umbrellas, and she laughs more.

"What's so funny?" he asks, and she hears it far, far away.

"Scream!"

"What?"

She grabs his hand and runs, runs until she finds a place to climb up on.

He runs after her, keeps up, and she turns to him. She looks, trickles of rain starting on his hair, down to his chin. His eyes crinkle around the edges, like he's forgotten to turn them off with his smile.

She swings an arm over his shoulder, holds onto the hair on the side of his neck, and kisses him.

He kisses back. It's the most enthusiastic thing he's done all day.

She pulls away, but holds his hand again. "Come on," she says, and climbs on the bridge walls—stone, wide as her feet are long, safe enough.

"Come up and scream with me," she says, and she's about to scare off the old lady that's walking down the other side of the bridge, but Serena still opens her arms, hopes it doesn't end in a heart attack, looks above, and screams at the top of her lungs.

A few seconds, just about, and Dan's still laughing, still on the deck, and he _has_ to get up with her, scream with her, he just does. She shouts, "Come on, scream with me!", and the rain is falling hard, fast, and Serena's shirt is soaked, but he's still looking at her face like he's entranced. "Climb up, come on!"

And he takes the hand she's holding out, and does.

His scream is long, reverberating, the tension, the doubts coming out. Even when she joins him, she can still hear him underneath, stopping to breathe, focusing on scream and release, scream and release, instead of the cold, the way they're both getting completely soaked, the way they already are.

Eventually, he stops. He rests his back against the blueish metallic post, and turns to Serena. A shiver goes through her—partly the look, partly the way her bra's sticking to her skin. His smile softens, becomes something that Serena's seen before—curiosity, realization—as he pulls her close.

She leans into him, and, this time, she lets him take the first step.

After all, he's the one catching up with his sanity.

This is a picture of the bridge.


	14. Chapter 14

_May 8, 2017._

He's awake before dawn.

In fact, he's barely slept at all. He's been lying away, watching the woman next to him, as if he was afraid that she'd disappear as soon as he'd close his eyes. He wanted to write a poem about the way her hair reflected the moonlight, but by now he'd learned that he was a better journalist than poet and should stay away from rhyme and metre.

Morning came too soon to complete his observation of her, but he contends himself with the idea that there'll be plenty of time for that.

Now, she already stirs against him, stretching herself and making the kind of sound people make when they wake up from a pleasant sleep.

He kisses the tip of her nose. "Good morning, Mrs Humphrey!"

Serena laughs and buries her face in his chest. "Oh God. I think I'll need some time to get used to that! It's like this is the first day of the rest of my life."

Dan frowns a little. "Is that a good or a bad thing?"

Serena pulls away from him, pursing her lips.

"Let me think about it for a moment," she teases. "Hmm." Then she breaks into laughter. "I think... good."

She kisses him softly, her tongue soft and warm against his lips. "Definitely good."


End file.
